It is well known in the state of the art to supply a device, e.g. a mobile terminal, with a color LCD display, which allows presentation of information in color to a user of the terminal.
A color LCD display comprises different pixels, each of which can be set to be white, red, green and/or blue. The distribution of the colors to the different pixels of the display is selected according to the information that is currently to be presented. In addition, the brightness of each color can be set for each presented pixel. A user of the device will be able to see the information on the display due to reflective characteristics of the display.
In case the LCD display is moreover transmissive, the set pixels can constitute in addition a color filter for a backlight provided to the display from within the device. The filtered light is perceived by a user of the device equally as information presented on the display. The backlight may improve the presentation in particular in unfavorable light conditions.
Usually, there is not much information available on the characteristics of LCD displays released by different manufacturers. Some displays may turn out to perform well under specific light conditions, but poorly under other light conditions.
But even the presentation on displays of a high quality might be difficult to perceive in extreme lighting situations. Such extreme lighting situations can be for instance bright daylight, very blue light, or certain hues typical for each location on earth. The performance of the display is given by the sum of the adaptation state of the user, the reflection of external light on the display panel, and the characteristics of the display itself.
It is known to use sensors which measure the intensity of the light which is currently surrounding a device. Such measurements are for example used in CD-players, which adjusts the display light according to a measured light intensity. Such measurements are also used in mobile terminals, which automatically turn a backlight on, in case this is assumed to be required with the current intensity of surrounding light. These approaches, however, do not take into account the coloring of the respective surrounding light, which coloring may result in different effects on different colors of the display. Thus, these approaches do not provide an optimal adaptation of the presentation on a display to the respective lighting conditions.
Also functions of a device other than the presentation of information on the LCD display might be influenced by the specific coloring of the surrounding light. In case the device comprises a digital camera, for example, the quality of images taken by the camera might depend on the degree of an achieved adaptation of a calibration of the camera to the respective lighting conditions.